My wholly unqualified thoughts:


Refurbishing:
Cost effectiveness does not come into play in politics, and fixing old planes does not move around enough money to be politically effective for the politician. Politicians would rather give lucrative new-production contracts to their benefactors.

Everyone likes shiny and new. Including the taxpayers. Try telling them you want to refurbish a fleet of 30 year old airplanes, then every critic will crawl out of the swamps to tell you how stupid the idea is to fix an obsolete platform.

Helicopters:
Helicopters have relatively high operational costs compared to fixed wing aircraft.

Helicopters have relatively low survivability compared to fixed wing aircraft.

Helicopters are only capable of speeds up to around 180mph, and have a common service ceiling below 20k ft. The A-10 can travel over 400 mph and has a service ceiling of over 40k ft.

I don't think a helicopter could be a GAU 8 platform. Leaving it to only be armed with missiles and smaller calibers means it is no more effective than drones (which are much cheaper).

A Blackhawk helicopter costs more than the final production price of an A-10. (But we would likely not be able to buy new A-10s for the same price as in 1984.)

New A-10s:
Fairchild-Republic is out of business. They were bought by a company that is only interested in product support - not new manufacture. So you would need to convince the design owner to turn it over to a manufacturer - and any manufacturer is probably going to futz up the design with their own improvements.

One more thought about A-10 vs Helicopters: The A-10 can carry 13 tons of weaponry.




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There are few military aircraft that I'd like a ride in. Even without a pilot trying to showboat G forces, the A10 would be at the top of my list.

Helicopters are great for ground support but they are fragile compared to the A-10. They can't fire a 30 mm cannon for sure and no way you can have double redundant systems on a chopper.

To safely put a 30mm shell within 20 feet of the troops and destroy ANYTHING except the good guys is unique. And it does not put just one shell it puts down a big can of whoop ass and will punch holes in any tank.

Go talk with guys who maintain and fly the A29, they hate it. It's unreliable, hard to work on, and parts support from Brazil sucks. The AT-6 was much more capable but lost the bid for the Iraq CAS program due to politics. With over 1000 delivered to the USAF and USN I'd be curious how the T-6 "barely manages to be a trainer". I've talked with F-22 pilots who claim the T-6 is the sweetest flying airplane they've ever piloted. The Scorpion is also very much still in play, and actually in many ways is being considered as a replacement for the A-10 in the CAS role.

As I remember there is a basic rule at the Pentagon, the Army does not get to have fixed wing combat aircraft. That is the job of the Air Force. The Air Force can't have have submarines or tanks.

That's why you go autonomous. Provide a directive, mass produce, set in motion and forget. They don't have to be large. Use a Master, then a mother, then swarm smalls from the mother.

If I was going to outfit an offensive I would:
- go interior rogue (terrorism with highly committed thugs, expendable)
- mess up infrastructure
- mess up water, food and electricity
- set up bio-warfare, not to kill but to tie up resources
- unleash the drones...

The whole thing wouldn't take as much resources as an all out offensive and frankly would take about a year to bring any country down that wasn't used to hardship...

Virtually all science fiction.

Only in James Bond movies and other movies about megalomaniacs can you find the large numbers of henchmen that are a willing to die for the boss. Usually one punch to the jaw drops them like a sack of flower.

The infrastructure of a country is vast. Yea, messing up some hubs will slow things down a lot and rebuild a bridge is not quick and easy.
You will need a LOT of drones and operators and a level of artificial intelligence we are not close to developing yet. You are thinking of the Terminator movies. We are a long way from that technology.

Funny misspelling of the week, there...

Go talk with guys who maintain and fly the A29, they hate it. It's unreliable, hard to work on, and parts support from Brazil sucks.

I usually only get to talk to the guys who take the green bird and finish it for the customers. And the military acceptance pilots. They seem to think the A-29 is more robust, more powerful, and more pilot friendly than the AT-6. However they agree with you on the Brazilian support.

It may be a sweet flyer, but the people I have spoken with said the AT-6 did not hold up well in the ME environment, and that the brakes sucked.

I don't know what to say, other than your guys and my guys seem to disagree. I've never flown either, so have no first-hand opinion.

When I was at Pleiku, Viet Nam (1966), I witnessed the AC-47 Gunships. Not an A-10, but it got the job done back then for ground support, thank you very much!
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Matt,

I find the Scorpion interesting - do you have any inside word on it?

For the cost of a few B2's I could topple a small country in a month. Granted it would require some hardcore, 'unethical' doings but...

The AT-6 was never fielded so they must be thinking of the T-6. We upgraded the engine by 500 shp, upgraded the brakes, and made a lot of modfifocations to support high/hot operations for the AT-6. I managed a variety of engineering, modification, and flight test tasks on the program for about 3 years.

My business has multiple components on it. Nothing insider that I can share, but they will have additional aircraft flying soon and some very promising prospects for a sale.

Got to see those side firing mini gun setups a couple of times along the DMZ in Nam.

Really spectacular at night. The ones I saw had a couple of guns firing from one plane.
Looked like glowing waving ribbons of red light.

Pretty intense concentrated fire for such a Rube Goldberg creation.

Seems like the A 10 took that idea and was designed for the job.

Seeing close support from ships probably 20 miles away with big guns was also pretty mind blowing. Got to say their spotter seemed a bit out of his element when visiting us for a couple of days. Think he was happy to head back to the ship.

Cheers Richard

For the record, the Apache does fire a 30mm round. Ir is a 30x113 compared to the A-10 which is the 30x173.

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To sum up Cash's explanation. Politics and the brass doesn't like unsexy aircraft.

So on the topic of the A-10, they have already exceeded their design life significantly and are maintenance hogs, pun intended. All of the fielded aircraft were re-winged and had some significant structural upgrade/repair work done the last time we decided to not retire them. They are very useful so they get flown a LOT. Eventually they just get worn out and are not practical to keep flying. They are also overkill for the job, modern CAS is taking out a Toyota pickup or some guys setting an IED, not a tank. So there are a number of cheaper options that when paired with modern precision weapons are a much better value proposition. But none are as cool. Seeing an A-10 strafing run from an observation tower at a military range was freaking awesome, and I have several friends that are current/former Hog pilots that adore them.

This mix-up is most likely my fault.
My "remove before flight" keychain says AT-6, so I probably just thought they were all the same thing - a Pilatus PC-9 = T-6 = AT-6 = Texan II, etc.

But... what if we made flying submarines?

Wouldn't they be supermarines then?